


not so pretty now

by rileyhart



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, HA see what i did there, Pre-show, and other people are like why does she know?? thats unrealistic, but in all honesty it always disturbed me that she knew what pretty was, so here's why, the answer is not v pretty, why does el know what pretty is???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 11:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileyhart/pseuds/rileyhart
Summary: she's five the first time they shave her head.





	not so pretty now

**Author's Note:**

> i hear a lot of people complain about how el even knew the concept of pretty having been raised in isolation as a lab experiment, and this is basically just a short fic about why she knows what 'pretty' even is

The first time they shave her head she’s five.

A strange man comes into her room and grabs her roughly by the upper arm. There’s no gently holding her hand, no softly telling her she’s going to get a haircut, he just grabs her, and she has no clue what is going on, but she knows it’s bad. She kicks and screams all down the hallway as he drags her, and not one person passing helps her, in fact they don’t even take a second glance. He drags her to another room, and practically throws her into a chair where she is immediately restrained, as if she’s a wild animal, not a helpless five year old. 

Her Papa is there, that’s the first thing she notices once she stops crying. “Papa!” she cries out. “Papa! Papa! Help me!”

Papa wouldn’t hurt her. Papa was nice to her, he bought her treats and toys sometimes, he would say, “Eleven, one day you’ll do great things.” Papa wouldn’t let them do what ever they are about to do to her.

Papa doesn’t so much as respond to her. “Papa, please!” she begins to cry again, and he ignores her, talking quietly to another man instead.

“Papa, Papa,” she sobs, as one man begins to hack at her hair with a pair of scissors, tugging on it without care.

It’s only when they turn on the clipper that she begins to shriek. She has no clue what it is, it’s buzzing, it looks sharp, and they are moving it awfully close to her face.

She screams loudly, twisting this way and that, desperately trying to escape what ever the hell they are doing to her. It’s only after one of the men slap her so hard across the face that they steal of the sound out of her mouth that she stops, and lies their motionlessly, sobbing.

When they finally finish they undo the restraints and she reaches up to her newly shaven head, flinching at the strange feeling of her buzzed hair. 

One of the men laugh at her, and she shrinks back into her chair. Her face is red and puffy from crying, and the man who laughed walks over to her, and bends down. She tries to shrink further back into the chair.

He smiles, as cruel as his laugh, and points at a mirror in the room. She looks at herself, red and hairless, her face shining with tears. He places a finger under her chin and lifts her head up, looking at her in the mirror. “Not so pretty now, huh.”

She gulps, and her whole face practically trembles with the desire to cry and the conflicting struggle to hold back her tears.

He drops her chin and walks away, and she looks at herself in the mirror again.

_Not pretty._


End file.
